Joule Thief

[TinselKoala]

I just got to get me some of them magic crococlipleads!

Meanwhile... it's now almost 1900, and I am still sitting at 1.322 Volts...... that is a decrease of one millivolt in 25 hours.... I've seen it go down to 1.318 volts then come up a bit, maybe a loose connection to the voltmeter....  early this morning I took the green LED off and put a white LED with a 22R series resistor, put the LED in a ping-pong ball as a diffuser, it's glowing eerily .... other than that I've made no changes.

ETA: My FedEx boxes came through today! Much worse for wear, paperwork missing, but the Tex 2213 scope and the Topward dual power supply are intact and working.... whew. TriField meter ditto. I don't know if there was anything else packed because the inventory lists are missing.... I hope the Shimpo got left out of the shipment somehow and is still safely at the other undisclosed location, safe and cold.

[TinselKoala]

Oh come on. Now it's midnight 30, and the voltage is creeping up again. It dipped to 1.321 but now it's 1.322 with the last "2" trying to flicker over to "3" and stay there. This time it's not due to any loose or intermittent connection. The thing is just sitting there, glowing eerily, running on nothing. Well..... at least the charge isn't depleting.
Where is the "nothing" coming from? Now that my boxes have arrived and I have my trusty TriField Meter.... I can tell that there is a lot of magnetic field activity around and near my workbench. I have power lines all over the place, I have power supplies and scopes running (two now, whooopie), but I don't have the maze of clipleads that could be picking up power, just the compact build with the tiny coil with two magnets. And this house has a metal roof, and it is in a "radio dead" zone, the reception of both AM, FM and VHF too is terrible in this block.
I guess it's time for a field trip.

[synchro1]

@Tinelkoala,

               That circuit has to be tuned close to perfection to balance the charge so long. Do you use a permanent magnet anywhere in the circuit? 

[TinselKoala]

@synchro: Yes, the little choke coil that I wound with the extra windings has a magnet on each end of the ferrite spool making its core. It came out of the TV like that. I have two other similar coils from TV sets that also came with magnets installed.
The voltage is showing 1.319 right now, at 0745.

[synchro1]

@TK,

      I wound some tiny spiral coils that peformed the magnet blocking experiments very well. I wonder if a pair of "Variable Flux Resistor" spiral coils might be of help fitted in between the magnets and the ferrite core. A 6 volt JonnyDavro buzzer to transistor base and pot is a cheap PWM for this tiny coil. Additioal disk magnets on each end would allow one to adjust the ferrite Gauss to the current flux level or a bit to each side to turn the power up and down.